


Initiation

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Third Doctor Era, UNIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22616821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: "Some outfits sent you after headlight fluid.  Others used a bucket of prop wash.  In UNIT HQ, all you had to do was wait.  Sooner or later, the Doctor and Jo Grant would want some practice disabling guards."
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	Initiation

The new guy was known as Zed, due to the look of barely-suppressed terror that NCOs and officers alike routinely developed when faced with the prospect of pronouncing Zdziarski. Benton privately thought it was a lot easier when you concentrated on the way _he_ said it and just forgot about how it was spelled, but Zed was used to being Zed by now. At the moment, Zed was sitting alone in a corner of the canteen—alone, because it was fifteen hundred, well past lunchtime—nursing a cup of tea, a slowly purpling bruise on his chin, and a lost look.

Benton sat down next to him. "You all right?”

Zed blinked at him, as if he hadn't even noticed Benton's approach. "This?" He put his hand to the bruise. "Oh, no, this is nothing. An accident, even. She didn't mean to hit me there.”

Some outfits sent you after headlight fluid. Others used a bucket of prop wash. In UNIT HQ, all you had to do was wait. Sooner or later, the Doctor and Jo Grant would want some practice disabling guards.

"Bad luck," Benton sympathized. "They're probably working on a new one.”

"New one?”

"How to fight when tied to a chair, that sort of thing.”

"Oh, no," Zed shook his head, "no, this came later.”

"Later?" Benton thought, _he didn’t._

"Well, they worked a couple of routines on me, and that was all right—I was wearing padding—but I was getting sick of playing the stooge, you know? So I asked Miss Grant what she'd do if she got in a situation where she couldn't hit a man from behind, and didn't have the Doctor along—“

Benton thought, _he did._ “And?"

"She said it worried her quite a lot, actually, and perhaps I could give her a few pointers just in case.”

_He did, with bells on._ "Bad luck," Benton repeated. "How many ice packs will you be wanting?”

"She's a hundred pounds soaking wet and she looks like a confused baby bunny!" It burst out of him as if it had been brewing ever since the bout, which it probably had. "I mean, how, how—just _how?”_

"Don't worry," Benton soothed, "it happens to everyone, their first time. If you sparred with her regularly, you'd win most of 'em—not because she doesn't know what she's doing, but because she _is_ a hundred pounds soaking wet and you have the reach on her. One of the reasons she uses the 'looking harmless' bit so much. Although I don't know that she's thought it through exactly like that." In fact, he was quite certain she hadn't. Jo Grant was not a calculating soul. The thing was, she _did_ worry about going toe to toe with a larger opponent (i.e, almost everyone), and had probably been genuinely hoping for some useful pointers from Zed. Taking him down a peg or fifteen had been the last thing on her mind, and she was probably completely oblivious to the massive drubbing she'd given his ego.

Probably.

Zed looked at him, then sat back with a groan. _”You're_ her regular sparring partner.”

"When I can," Benton admitted. "I don't mind telling you, I caught more than my share of bruises before I could come at her the way I would another soldier. But her duties are dangerous enough that she needs the practice, so—" He shrugged.

"I thought she was the old man's assistant.”

"She is. He gets in more trouble than the rest of UNIT combined." Benton paused, considering how to best deliver the _unofficial_ UNIT briefing. "See, here's how it is. They told you about the aliens; well, those two are like alien-tracking bloodhounds. If the Doctor gets involved and stays involved, it's a sure bet there's _something_ bizarre." He was, after all, perfectly capable of taking himself off any case that didn't meet his standards. "So if you're—I don't know—told off to guard a comatose man in a hospital bed, and you know that the Doctor's involved, you don't go treating it like a doddle. The odds are good that you'll get giant bats through the window presently. We've lost a number of people, just from not remembering that. The other rule is, never hang about wondering if it's really happening. Even if it's homicidal cabbages. Just find cover.”

What Benton didn't say was that occasionally, he could tell ahead of time who would end up medically discharged or dead. And it was partly because of Jo.

Sooner or later, the Doctor and Jo would need to practice something they'd worked out. A new soldier would get dragged into it. And how he reacted to Jo afterwards was a decent predictor of how well the man would do. There were men who couldn't come to grips with the _idea_ that they'd been knocked about by a girl and an old chap wearing lace—men who would treat Jo with badly disguised hostility, ever after.

When the homicidal cabbages came calling, they were slow to react. They got shot, or electrocuted, or digested. Benton thought perhaps it had something to do with not being good at new ideas, not adapting fast enough, but he was hardly a psychologist. He just paid attention.

"It's a shame, though," Zed said.

"What is?”

"Well, I meant to show her not to fold her thumb inside her fist when she throws a punch, then ask her if she would like to go for coffee sometime. But she's hardly going to go for a man she can take three falls out of three.”

He sounded rather as if he wanted to be told that he was wrong.

Not hostility, then. Benton was suddenly much happier about Zed's chances with UNIT. "I don't know about _that,”_ he said. "You never know till you try."


End file.
